Pension protestors persuade with cupcakes

This Wednesday, as prospective freshers stepped on and over the infamous PH, they encountered lecturers, students, and UCU members handing out cupcakes and protesting the new University pension scheme.

According to the organizers, this new scheme could mean that new and existing St Andrews staff could lose upwards of £130,000 from their retirement funds. If this happens, the UCU believes that we will see a drop in the performance and number of post grads who seek employment in academia.

As with most of the protests the stand has covered (which has been quite a lot lately), the University is allegedly unwilling to cooperate; according to some protesters it has “acted like a bully”. This schoolyard banter raises the question: how will the University be affected?

As one protester, who wishes to remain unnamed (Voldemort-esque?), explained: “A university runs on good will, and if the university doesn’t realise that, we will stop performing tasks that are not in our contracts. They [the University] cannot understand what it would be like if staff didn’t go out of their way to perform all of their obligations.”

Unfortunately, this doesn’t bode well for students. Another member of staff confirmed, “quality will drop as staff members become more fed up with the University and their pension scheme.”

The Stand has asked the university to comment.

On a side note, The Stand has some advice for protesters. If you are looking for public support, cupcakes are definitely a step in the right direction.